by Karen Chance
So we suddenly had this alliance to, you know, stop that. Only everybody in it pretty much hated everybody else, and the consul was left trying to herd not only cats, but angry cats, and if I hadn’t disliked her so much, I might have felt a vague twinge of sympathy. As it was, I was forced into cheering her on, simply because I didn’t want to die along with the rest of humanity. And that would have meant solving this little mystery pdq, even if Louis-Cesare, my boyfriend of the terrible taste, wasn't involved.
He wasn't dead; I'd know if he was dead. But he was obviously in trouble, because I'd practically drowned myself in the substance that helped me access Dorina's mental gifts—she got all the fun stuff from dear old Dad—but not a peep. And the thought of what that might mean was making me sick even without the booze.
"Can you help?" the female vamp asked me, as Marlowe's face started contorting with the expressions he was using in his chat with his European counterpart. Vamps usually masked that sort of thing, because silent communication doesn’t help you much if you give an expressive play-by-play of the process. But it kind of looked like he was past caring.
"I don’t know," I told her honestly. "Sometimes, Louis-Cesare and I seem to have a sort of connection, but it isn’t working right now."
"It isn’t working with Anthony, either," she said, biting her lip. "We've been on this for over a week, and nothing."
"Well, there's always the old-fashioned way. Where were the two of them seen last?"
"The same place. But it's . . . difficult . . . to get in there."
"Difficult to get in where?" I asked, wondering what on earth could stymie even a vampire senate's resources.
She told me.
And, suddenly, Radu popped up, looking surprisingly perky for someone who had recently been stomped on.
"Oh, love, that's not impossible at all. I already have us an appointment!"
Chapter Seven
1457, Mircea
A creepy alleyway in Venice, Italy
"I did have bodyguards," Jerome said, as they made their way through a ridiculously narrow alley. "Or assistants, anyway."
"It doesn’t appear to have helped," Mircea pointed out, glancing behind him.
"We were ambushed," Jerome said savagely. "We'd barely disembarked before they grabbed us!"
Mircea was suddenly wishing he hadn’t asked for details, at least not here. The little path that was almost brushing his shoulders on either side was made even more confining by the second and third stories of houses that had been pushed out over it. They were designed to gain the neighbors a little extra living space, but they also blocked out much of the sky, turning the alley into more of a tunnel than a street. One with few options for escape were things to go wrong.
And on this street, things frequently did.
This wasn't the vamp part of Venice. This was the mage part, and it had always made Mircea's skin crawl. He'd heard that some of his kind, the older ones especially, liked little confined places. To the point that they often made their courts underground, where the sun couldn’t penetrate and where traps and snares and dead ends gave them complete control over their environment.
He supposed that made sense. Someone was always trying to assassinate the elders, for old grievances or to steal their wealth or position. Being out in the open made them more vulnerable, and gained them little, since masters could communicate with each other mentally without having to risk a trip away from home.
But he wasn't a master, and he wasn't old, and confined spaces to someone with a knight's training were just good opportunities to get ambushed.
Like right now, for instance.
"Nobody is sneaking up on us," Jerome assured him.
"How do you know?"
"I'd feel them."
The way you felt the last ones, Mircea didn’t say, because it wouldn’t help.
Like looking over your shoulder another few dozen times, he told himself sharply. You're a vampire, for God's sake. Use your senses!
But that was just it—mages could fool the senses, even vampire ones. Mircea had once believed that his new condition would make him invulnerable, from everyone except his own kind, at least. But he'd quickly discovered that that wasn't true at all. Humans outnumbered his people by a huge margin, so huge that breaking the secrecy laws and calling attention to yourself would get you a quick stake or a trip to see the sunrise. And those were just the normal kind of humans.
Magical ones were . . . something else. Something deadly, if they chose, and unlike his own power, which was relatively set, mages were constantly coming up with new spells, potions and curses. Just because you were able to counter them one day didn’t mean you’d have what it took the next. Not to mention that they bought and sold magic all the time, giving one man the power of many, should he have the wherewithal to purchase what he lacked.
Vampires had to earn their power, Mircea thought resentfully.
Mages just plucked down gold for it.
Gold they probably stole anyway.
From people foolish enough to frequent places like this.
"Let me do the talking," Jerome said, suddenly catching his arm.
Mircea looked up at the little bar they'd stopped outside of, and then back at his friend.
"I was planning to."
They went in.
The place was just as Mircea remembered it, from a long ago visit. Which was unfortunate, since it had been a pit. And the years had not been kind; it was still small, dark and cramped, with funny, potion-like smells in the background, and tables so close together that it was hard to move between them. Although it would have been anyway, with the ceiling sagging so low in spots that a normal-sized man couldn't stand upright.
Mircea stifled a curse, after bumping his head for the second time. Not because he was clumsy, but because the damned tavern was lit only by a small fireplace—too small. It left the corners in shadows so deep that even vampire eyes had trouble making them out.
Fortunately, nobody appeared to be hiding in them, because the place was all but empty. The few patrons sitting dispiritedly over their drinks never even looked up as they came in and made their way to one of the tables in the higher end of the room. The only person to notice was the barman, coming out of the back after a moment to slam down a couple steins of the place's hideous . . . beer? Wine? Mircea had never been sure what it was meant to be. It smelled like a dead rat stewed in vinegar, so it was anyone's guess, but they had to pay an exorbitant price for it anyway.
It was the cost of admission, which was supposed to include a chance to speak to the proprietor.
Whoever that was tonight.
"Hieronimo?" Jerome asked, looking up with a friendly smile. "We'd like to—"
The barman left.
"—have a word," Jerome finished, with a twist to his lips.
"How can you trust someone when you don’t even know his real name?" Mircea whispered, leaning over the table. Because they didn’t. The man they'd met here before had informed them that 'Hieronimo' was simply a code word for whoever was on call that night.
The bar was a front for a group that sold advice, along with more unsavory things, to non-magic types with gold to waste, because God knew they couldn’t make much off their beer. It had been a staple of the Venetian magical community for a few centuries now, but nobody knew much about the people who ran it, except that they all called themselves by their long-dead first proprietor's name for some reason that Mircea didn’t know and didn’t care about. But if you wanted answers from a mage—a good one—you paid for the beer and you asked your questions, and were then quoted a price for additional services.
Assuming he bothered to talk to you at all, that is.
"I don’t trust anyone but you," Jerome murmured. "That's why you’re here. But I was told that the mages are on our side in this."
"Whatever this is," Mircea said, and got only a small smile in return.
Personally, he would have paid what little he had, and glad
ly, just for the chance to escape. But Dorina's fate hung in the balance, so he stayed, despite the chills crawling up and down his spine. The senate wanted Jerome's mission to succeed, and if Mircea helped, Jerome thought he could make a case for an exception to the kill-dhampirs-on-sight rule.
So this would work, Mircea would make it work, whatever the hell this was. Only he really wished he could get more than three words out of Jerome about it! But his friend had been abnormally close-lipped—like now, for instance.
"It will be fine," Jerome told him, because, yes, that helped.
Mircea shut up and drank beer to give himself something to do, grateful for once that he couldn't taste it.
Time passed.
More time passed.
The desire to get up and bolt grew—significantly.
Or maybe that was the beer. Mircea pushed it away from him with a sound that made Jerome look up. And smile.
"It really is astonishing, isn’t it?"
"At least tell me what happened to you," Mircea said, ignoring the attempt at inane conversation. "Or am I not allowed to know that, either?"
Jerome glanced around, but the two nefarious types at the other table had just left, leaving them momentarily alone in the small room. He lowered his voice anyway. "Somebody knew we were coming."
"How? You said yourself—"
"I don’t know how. But it wasn't happenstance. No one tries to rob three masters—"
"Not if they’re sane."
"—or carries that kind of firepower. They shouldn’t even have had it!"
"You mean those things they were throwing at us?" Mircea made a quick gesture, slashing the air like lightning. He'd been in Venice too long; he was starting to talk with his hands like a local, but he didn’t have a word for what he'd seen. "Those . . . bolts of power?"
Jerome nodded. "They took out both my men, and would have killed me, too, if not for you."
Mircea blinked a little, not sure that Jerome realized what he'd just said. Those strange energy bolts had shattered some brick, cutting Mircea's face, and had left a hole in his cloak, which had annoyed him even more. Because his face had healed already, but that cloak was his best.
He'd been fretting over having to save up for a new one, since the burnt area wasn't near a seam or an edge and was thus impossible to repair discreetly. Or having to waste hours trawling through the pawn shops, trying to find a replacement without noticeable flaws. He hadn't thought that every bolt he dodged could have killed him.
He swallowed slightly, trying to remember how many of the damned things the masters had thrown.
Too many.
He suddenly wasn't feeling so well.
"You saved me," Jerome repeated, leaning over the table. "I won’t forget that."
Mircea sipped his terrible drink some more, struggling not to show how shaken he was. "You, er, you were well hidden," he said, because Jerome was looking like he expected a response. "I . . . heard you calling in my head, but when I reached the pier I couldn’t find you. Until you appeared out of nowhere—"
Jerome shot him a smile. "It's my gift, remember?"
Mircea nodded, recalling the first time they'd met, as two supposedly weak, masterless vampires in one of the city's holding cells. Mircea had been exactly as he seemed, a down on his luck baby vampire trying to survive in this new, cut throat world, and not doing especially well at it. Jerome, on the other hand, had been in disguise, tracking a woman who had wronged his family more than a century before, because vampires have long memories.
Especially when someone kills their Sire.
Nonetheless, he shouldn't have been able to get away with it, since the power masters radiate was unmistakable, like ants on the skin. Fire ants, Mircea thought, resisting an impulse to rub his arms. It was a memory, however, not a current problem, because Jerome had an unusual skill.
He was the only vampire Mircea had ever met who had the ability to draw down his power, to mimic the level of any vampire he chose. He could feel like nobody and nothing, just a baby, completely unthreatening and harmless—to others of his kind, anyway. Who were so used to homing in on power signatures in battle, that they'd temporarily lost him when he went dim. And then disappeared into a crowd filled with actual young vampires on errands for their masters.
Mircea had found him shortly thereafter, zeroing in on the mental cry for help that had echoed so loudly in his ears that he'd yelped and scared a shopkeeper. He'd quickly turned from hunting for deals among the pigment sellers of Venice, to hunting Jerome. And had found him, just as one of the masters did.
They'd had to spread out to check every supposed baby vamp in the crowd, so he and Jerome had been left facing only one. Who still managed to gut Jerome before they killed him, but not before the vamp got off a cry for help of his own. Leaving Jerome and Mircea on a mad chase across the city, one they'd won only because they knew it better than those following them.
But it had been a very close thing.
Too close, not to know what was going on here.
Although, considering where they were, Mircea already had a good idea.
"Those bolts they were throwing," he said softly. "They weren't master's powers, were they?"
He was talking about gifts, like Jerome's ability to fade, that upper-level masters sometimes developed over time. Gifts that seemed a lot like magic to Mircea. Not the kind the mages had—all flashy spells and fire magic, the kind that could incinerate a young vampire such as himself in a single blow, if they landed. But the kind that made sure they never would.
Mages could levitate things, using spells to send items soaring into the skies. But Mircea had seen a master lift a fully laden galley, unimaginably heavy and caught on a spur of rock, as if it was nothing. Allowing the damage to be fixed and the ship saved.
Mages could augment their speed with tricks, or tattoo their bodies with glyphs that gave them enhanced vision or scent. But masters could move faster than the average mage could see, like those the other night, who had crossed half a city before Mircea and Jerome could reach the next sestiere. They didn’t need spells, they already had senses keener than a hound's nose or a hawk's eye.
Mages could change their appearance, altering it with potions and spells. But a master could reach into someone's mind, and make them see whatever he wanted them to see. Mircea had found that he was especially good at that already, able to influence the minds of those around him in ways that others, even some far older than himself, could not. He suspected that, if he ever did manage to reach master status, that might be where his talent would lie.
But what he'd seen last night . . . that was not a master's power. Vampires were magical creatures, but even the best of them couldn't throw spells. That kind of magic was solely the purview of the mages.
So how had they managed it?
"That's what you're here for, isn't it?" he pressed, when Jerome just sat there.
Jerome looked uncomfortable, but he finally nodded. And then that voice came again, the one echoing in Mircea's head in a really uncomfortable way. Because Jerome wasn't going to discuss this aloud, even in whispers.
What you haven’t heard, what almost no one knows who isn’t there, is that we aren’t winning against the rebels. We were, at first. Fought them to a standstill, killed off the leaders, thought that was it.
Mircea nodded. The rebellion that had broken out after the new consuls took power had been vicious but short, at least in vampire terms. It had taken six years, during which he'd fretted in Venice, unable to get back to his wife, because the fighting had raged fiercest in his old homeland. Travel had been forbidden, and by the time the ban was lifted—
He pushed the thought away abruptly. What was important now was Dorina. And this new information, which threatened the world they both lived in.
"It's started up again?" he asked.
Jerome's mouth tightened. It never stopped. We may have killed a few leaders, but there were apparently many more we didn't know about. They w
ent underground, made new plans—and new friends. And recently re-emerged . . . .
"And?" Mircea prompted, because Jerome's mental voice had petered out.
And it's a slaughter. We met them in combat two months ago, and we haven't won an encounter since. They've started exhibiting new skills—mage skills—like nothing we've ever seen. Not a potion bomb or some sort of spelled object, such as could be bought and would run dry soon enough. But vampires wielding actual magic, just like a mage. Throwing spells and making wards as if they were born to it! And yet having all the powers of their vampire nature, as well.
"What?" Mircea just looked at him. He'd expected something to do with magic, but not that. Because that was impossible! "But . . . they're vampires. They can't—"
"I assure you, they can." Jerome's gray eyes were sober. They’re using it to push us back, on almost all fronts. It's not general knowledge, because it just started happening, but it's only a matter of time before the news gets out. And if we don’t stop it now, it won’t be long before other masters hear of it—ones cowed by the senate at the moment, but unhappy with the new rules and restrictions on their behavior—and start joining the rebels.
"They can’t want to go back to that! To what we had!"
"Some do. Lawlessness is profitable." Jerome's mouth twisted. And even those who don't . . . well. No one likes being on the losing side, now do they?
He drank beer.
Mircea stared at him.
A man staggered out of the curtained room in back, and fell over, a knife protruding from his back, his pale blue eyes confused and fogged and desperate.
